Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2013. x, 365 pp. (Table, charts.) US$43.00, paper. ISBN 978-0-8133-4857-5.
This is a revised edition of SarDesai’s Southeast Asian History: Essential Readings (Boulder: Westview Press, 2006) and, like its predecessor, can be a companion to the author’s textbook, Southeast Asia: Past and Present (seventh edition, Boulder: Westview Press, 2013). The readings would usefully supplement any other textbook on Southeast Asian history, although the organization of these readings closely follows that of the four parts of the textbook, “Cultural Heritage,” “Colonial Interlude,” Nationalist Response” and “Fruits of Freedom.” Of these, the last and the first sections are the longest, while colonial rule as such receives relatively little space, although the third section, including nationalism and Japanese occupation, could be seen as picturing the decline and demise of the colonial era.
Let the buyer beware: the revised edition is little changed from the previous one. Five items, in all nearly one hundred pages dealing with the US war in Vietnam and Cambodia, have been eliminated, reflecting the editor’s desire to spend less time on the Second Indochina War. Instead, a much briefer pair of statements from Malaysia’s Mahathir bin Mohammad (whom SarDesai calls “Mohammad”) records his vision for Malaysia for 2020, and this is reflected in an additional “Vision” from ASEAN on the same topic. The other addition, Keith Taylor’s “The Trung Sisters in the Literature of Later Centuries,” shows how Vietnamese nationalism perpetuated the legend of their uprising against China. After the select bibliography, a new chart of Southeast Asian history provides an overview of significant events over the centuries. Unlike the first edition, this one has no index.
In geographical extent, the readings appear to cover the entire region, but Singapore has only subordinate mentions, while Laos and Timor Leste have few or none. Combining chronology and geography reveals that the texts on the Philippines are all from the Spanish colonial period—surely the articulate and rhetorically gifted Filipinos of the twentieth century could have added provocative material to the final section as well!
This leads to another problem. While most of the readings add information and background, the “voices” of Southeast Asians form only about one-fifth of the book, 66 pages by my count. These include Rizal, Sukarno, U Nu, Mahathir and Aung San Suu Kyi, but not Lee Kuan Yew, Suharto or others. Other primary sources, accounts by first-hand observers like Fa-hsien [Faxian], Marco Polo or de Loarca, add a mere 16 pages.
Some items are from “outsiders.” These are Lenin’s “Theses on Nationalism and Colonialism,” a text that exercised great influence on Ho Chi Minh and on other Southeast Asian nationalists, and excerpts from Lyndon B. Johnson’s 1965 speech, “The United States in Vietnam,” the apologia for the widening of the war by bombing targets in North Vietnam. Another is the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize eulogy for Aung San Suu Kyi, which pales compared to her own words.
About two-thirds of the book is comprised of reprints of other, secondary sources. These include Ian Mabett on early “Indianization,” and Heine-Geldern’s essential “State and Kingship in Southeast Asia.” In comparison, John Whitmore (“Foreign Influences and the Vietnamese Culture Core”) delineates the interaction of Chinese culture and indigenous Vietnamese responses in pre-modern times. Also important is an excerpt from Ben Kiernan’s “Pol Pot’s Rise to Power.”
The editor provides brief explanatory introductions. He has barely edited the texts, although some were shortened. Probably others could have used more editing. Certainly, a footnote could explain why U Nu wrote that on “the evening of 14 May [1945]” (182), the Japanese ambassador informed Burmese leaders that the atomic bomb had been dropped, that the Russians had entered the war against Japan and that Japan would surrender. The following reading from Elly Touwen-Bouwsma places these events (correctly) in August.
Many factors—suitability, length, availability and personal preference—can govern the choice of readings. I have problems with at least two of them. John Leddy Phelan’s “Hispanization of the Philippines” is a valuable discussion of the peculiar development of a special Philippine Catholicism, but it illustrates this point with minute details about the administration of the Sacraments. Could another article have illustrated Philippine developments more succinctly, or could this one have been shortened? The other is A.J. Stockwell’s “Decolonization in Malaya, 1942–1952,” which seems ill-placed in the section on “Nationalist Response.” Stockwell’s original title, “British Imperial Policy and Decolonization in Malaya” [italics mine] better reflects its contents, which describe not a struggle between Kuala Lumpur and London for the independence of Malaya but primarily a battle between the Foreign Office and the Colonial Office in London over Malaya. Imperial history, yes, but not “nationalist response.” While in the editor’s opinion this may reflect the real power struggle, Onn bin Jaafar, Tunku Abdul Rahman or even Chin Peng might have had something more pungent to contribute. Also, Buddhism and Islam take a back seat to political developments. Thus, Greg Fealy’s fine survey of Islam in Southeast Asia appears almost as an afterthought at the end of the book.
Perhaps it is too much to hope that students might pick up a book by Kartini, Mahathir or Aung San, even to read only parts of it. SarDesai has laudably attempted to cover the region in an interdisciplinary way, offering an alternative to messy or unbalanced collections of photocopies sometimes assigned to students. More local content, perhaps even some presentation of opposing views, could have enriched the choice, but if the editor has not quite met these ideal goals, the problem may lie with the complexity of his task and, in the end, the challenges of teaching Southeast Asian history.
Mary Somers Heidhues
Independent Scholar, Göttingen, Germany
pp. 634-636